“You aren’t going to prison.”
Her gaze down, she shakes her head. “Yes, I am.”
I rub my hand down her back. “What makes you think that you are? You didn’t do it. They’ll need evidence, Charlotte, and there is none.”
Her gaze goes to her family in the room, her lip quivering. “I’d go to prison for you. Whichever one of you did it, I will. I swear. But promise me you’ll look after Katnip.”
“Why are you looking at me?” Hayden argues defensively. “I don’t even know what the dude looks like.”
“You didn’t kill him?”
Hayden snorts. “No, and if I did, I wouldn’t drop him off at your library like a goddamn present. I’d make sure no fucker found him again.”
“Good to know,” Jaxon murmurs, pulling his wife away from the lunatic.
Her smile is snide. “Don’t worry, you and yours are safe,” she tells him, before tapping her lip. “Unless Reid pisses me off again.”
“If you didn’t, then who did?” Charlotte murmurs, fiddling with the pillow she pulled off the back of the sofa.
Hayden shrugs. “I thought Landon had done it, but again, he wouldn’t be stupid or cruel enough to take him to the library.”
Her brother snorts. “I thought Uncle Myles had done it.”
Myles shrugs. “I thought Max, since he went missing a lot for days after.”
Max gasps, placing a hand over his heart. “As much as I’d love to take the credit, I was stopping this one,” he jerks his thumb at Maverick, “from tearing the entire town down looking for him. I didn’t want the police to catch onto us looking for him. It would make us number one suspects.”
“You kind of are,” Jaxon murmurs.
“And who asked for your opinion?” Max retorts.
“I’m just saying, you are all here talking about murder like you are trying to solve who ate the last fucking cookie.”
“Max did,” everyone answers.
Jaxon rolls his eyes. “I’m just saying. Try to at least care that one of your own are accusing you.”
Landon takes a glance around the room. “Anyone else care that the first person she thought did it was Hayden.”
“My money would have been on Hayden,” Madison pipes up.
“I thought it was Dad,” her brother replies.
“I thought it was you,” Hope tells him.
Everyone else gives their two pennies worth until they stare at Lily. Jaxon narrows his eyes. “Don’t tell me you thought it could be one of them too.”
She shrugs, grimacing. “I thought it was the giant. He was the only one here not accounted for that night.”
All eyes turn to me, some hopeful, some resentful. “I didn’t fucking kill him, although I wouldn’t have lost sleep over it.”
“And I thought me and my family were nuts,” Jaxon mutters.
“I knew I liked you,” Max announces, grinning.
“You’ve just ordered chains to use on him if he steps out of line,” Maverick declares.
“That’s for the new dog I’m getting,” he fires back.
Lake’s expression lights up. “We’re getting a dog?”
He winces. “No. It died in transit and I can’t go through that kind of loss again.”
“Puh-lease,” Hayden remarks. “What about the razor you bought?”
He narrows his gaze on his daughter, his posture tight and on the defence. “I want to cut my hair. Is that a crime?”
“You pay the barbers to do your hair,” Lake replies warily.
He rolls his eyes, letting out a nervous chuckle. “God, you guys are so argumentative today. We aren’t here for me. We are here for Charlotte. She’s going to prison, for fuck’s sake.”
Charlotte’s turns into a blubbering mess. “I don’t want to leave and go to prison.”
Kayla glares at Max before moving to take a seat next to her daughter, comforting her. “You aren’t going anywhere. We will get this sorted, honey, I swear it.”
“What did they say about the flowers and notes?” Madison asks.
Wiping her nose on the sleeve of the hoodie I gave her the first night I met her, she answers, her voice shaky. “They think I’ve been sending them to myself.”
“And my gym?” I grit out. Do they think she faked that too?
“They think I got you to do it.”
“Fucking arseholes,” Hayden bites out. “They’re going to be so fixated on pinning this on Charlotte, they are going to miss who really did it.”
“She lost her keys to the library. They have to take that into account.”
“They think I planned that or made it up,” Charlotte explains.
“I was with you all night. They’ve not asked me where you were,” I tell her. That has to account for something.
“They might want you in for questioning, I don’t know. Officer Brown seemed to believe me, but that other guy was saying it was a lover’s quarrel that had turned bad. They think I was mad that he had a wife, that I got angry when he wouldn’t leave her, so I killed him. Then made up the false allegations so that when they found his body, I had an excuse.”
“This is bullshit. The only reason they know he has a wife is because of the message you told them you read,” Myles snaps. “They still don’t know if his name is Scott.”
“It’s all in the papers now,” Hayden adds. “The press latched onto the story quickly so the police have made a vague statement.”
“But the police haven’t released any details. They want to get as much evidence as they can before releasing the picture to the world,” Kayla adds.
“They need to inform the wife before they release the picture. They are hoping they can find his identity before then or that someone comes forward to report him missing,” Maverick explains.
“How do you know that?” I ask.
He glances at me, his expression void. “Because Beau, my daughter’s fiancé, has kept us in the loop. He just messaged me.”
“What do I do until then?” Charlotte whispers. “What if they never find out his true identity or who killed him?”
Maverick gives her a warm smile. “Go about your day and life, honey. The library is still closed for another week. Maddox has got people working to fix the electrics that were broken, and someone is coming in to change all the locks.”
“This is such a mess,” she murmurs.
“Speaking of press,” Max begins, turning to Hayden. “How pissed off is pretty boy?”
“He’s not a pretty boy,” she retorts. She sniffs haughtily. “And he’s fine.”
Max chuckles. “You gave a vivid description of what you thought about the dead body they found in a local library. They quoted you word for word.”
She shrugs, glancing at her nails. “I don’t regret it.”
“And mentioned your station,” Landon adds, his lips twitching.
“He’s not bothered. Some of the board members are, but they’ll get over it. They always do. It’s not the first time I’ve said something they don’t like.”